TDW: The Damned Ones
by Loose Cannon Doccy
Summary: A short selection of one-shots centered around my AU timeline of "The Darkness Within". This'll only be a few words, and an attempt to work out some of the stuff that never managed to get into the original version. AU-Centric, extremely dark.
1. Chapter 1: This Is The End

So this… this what the end looks like.

The moment where I finally open my eyes to what I did, and what had happened because of my actions. The single moment before it was all erased I got to give New Domino one last, long look at its ruined skyline.

The fires have stopped now. There's nothing for them to burn, and so they die out as well, along with the nine million people that used to live here.

I can see the sun rising. I can see its golden shafts of light emerge from the horizon like pillars of gold.

I can't stop crying. I'm crying because of the innocent children who had to die at the hands of the Dracomorphic Engine.

I'm crying because of the workers who thought they were doing something good with Project Akron, who were slaughtered when the children escaped.

I'm crying because of those who came to forgive Kroe and try to undo the situation had to die.

I'm crying because of those I killed through my ignorance.

I can still feel their presence. I feel the look of Anna Alexi, of Blaze, Snow and Lance, all their shock and disbelief. They can't believe I fell so far, how much Dracotherapy destroyed me and warped whatever I believed.

I feel the look of Sector Security. I feel their anger and despair. Anger at the psychics who came seemingly out of nowhere, and forced them into a guerilla war that they were doomed to lose, destined only to see their friends fall beside them.

I feel the look of the Arcadia Movement. I feel their frustration and dissapointment. Frustration at the harsh, even inhumane treatment they recieved from the rest of the world, and the dissapointment of seeing what fighting back resulted in.

I feel the look of the ordinary people who lived in New Domino; Satellite or not. Their feelings are one gigantic maelstrom of fear, disbelief and sadness as they were forced to witness their city, their home collapse and choke on its own blood.

I feel Leo and Luna. I feel their hurt and contempt. They thought me like a big brother, or even a father. They loved me so much, and what did I give them in return? I let them die. I refused to listen and I let them die.

And then, I feel Akiza. I feel her disbelief. I feel her anger. And I feel her pity. She thought she had finally understood me; the pain I went through and how much I loved her no matter what. She could barely believe when the truth came knocking on the window. Then she felt anger, rage directed at me for being such a heartless monster who would go to any length to prove himself right. And finally, I felt her pity. When she finally saw just how broken I truly was, and how desperate I was just to make it all go away.

And yet I barely feel anything anymore. Nothing but my tears rolling down and never stopping.

So this is what the end looks like.

It's beautiful.


	2. Chapter 2: Beautiful Friend

My first memory of Jay Alkain was not what you'd think, to be honest. The kid was surprisingly nice back then when I first met him. He tried his damndest to smile every time he was with someone he wasn't being forced to kill. I found it strange, as did just about everyone else.

I started thinking about why he was here. A lot of us were picked up from the street to be thrown into the Engine, because who the hell cares about a few forgotten Satellite kids? But a few of us were here for other reasons. I was sent here in a desperate attempt to treat my psychic powers.

I was literally tearing myself apart, and if I wasn't treated or at the very least prevented from using them, I would die. Through his research, Kroe tried his best to try and find a connection between positive, natural psychics and artificial, negative psychics, with the ultimate goal of finding a cure for the psychic condition.

Do you want to hear the worst thing? The worst thing is that Kroe managed to find it. He found the triggering molecules that both kinds of psychics had in common, and even managed to copy the neural signal that triggered and activated the powers.

Of course it just had to be the day when Jay got the privilege of experiencing Tier 15. The day when all this went to shit, and it was too late. Jay managed to overload the facility's circuits through the Engine, and every single kid that had been tortured at the hands of Chessary employees were simultaneously released.

I can barely describe it myself. It was a massacre, a slaughter of those who made us suffer, and then we escaped into the world. I don't know how the hell Chessary managed to cover it up, but considering the sheer amount of money they invested in the Project, they probably had failsafes in place for if something like… that happened.

What happened to Jay I don't know. I assume that Tier 15 was such a taxing experience that I wouldn't be surprised if it had killed him outright. I mean, Tier 1 felt like having all the blood in your veins immediately turn into white-hot lava and melt you from the inside. I personally only ever made it to Tier 13.

I'm pretty sure that nearly killed me. I was told I was subjected to it for around 27 seconds. It sure as hell felt like I was in there for at least a month. I can't imagine what Tier 15 must be like. But I'm pretty sure that's what sent him down the slippery slope, irrevocably damaging him.

I could barely recognize him when I met him again. The kid looked like something that shouldn't be alive in any stretch of the matter. His eyes would periodically begin bleeding, his breathing was too shallow to even classify as breathing, and I could practically see the veins underneath the skin ready to burst.

If he wasn't so unbelivably angry at just about everything so he was essentially little more than a frothing animal, his psychic powers would have long stopped supporting his body, and he would have died.

Think about that for a second. The only thing keeping his increasingly damaged body alive was pure, seething rage. No wonder he became more and more insane as his body took more and more damage.

And I think when Snow almost killed him basically put the final nail in the coffin for Jay having any lucid thoughts in his mind for the rest of his sad existence.

What happens next to him? I don't know. Maybe his rage finally dies out and kills him. Maybe his body gets torn apart by his rapidly growing psychic powers. Or maybe, just maybe, what little conscience and mind he's got left lets him think clearly for just one second.

Imagine that; everything you thought you knew being torn away from you right before your body breaks down and kills you. That's what in store for Jay Alkain. A death wrapped in agony and despair.


End file.
